MapTool 1.3 Development Build 61

[LaserWolf]

For what it's worth, that sounds identical in behavior to the "disconnection error" a few of us have described earlier in this thread. If you ask around, I wouldn't be surprised if one of your players was having trouble with their internet connection (although, unless they were running something else they may not have noticed).

[strokes]

Is anyone else having trouble with images loading in this build? I've tried logging into other servers/LANs, but I've had no luck with any images loading. I can see tokens but nothing else. Any help would be appreciated.

I have had this same thing occur now in two separate sessions with this build.

[Paradox]

This is cross-posted from another discussion thread. Not aq lot of new information here, but it is now happening enough that I'm starting to isolate patterns and variables. It's still all ancedotal evidence.. But maybe something will stand out as noteworthy. There were a few patterns I picked up on last night that I hadn't before.

If this is the wrongbad place to post this, my regrets and mea culpas.

***************************************


More ancedotal and incidental evidence...

Last night it struck again. And it may have nothing whatsoever to do with the Boot Code.. But here is what happened again:

One player gets dropped. Let's call him Derrick. Derrick recieves a message from MapTool that says he has been disconnected. (NOTE: I never before realized that the "Patient Zero" actually does get an error message! Even though no one else will!)

No one else recieves a message that Derrick has been dropped. In fact, no one notices anything wrong until people mentioned that they are typing things in the chat window that no one else is seeing.

As the GM, I at no point have or would use the Boot Command.

(I have blamed the Boot Command in the past, but I stopped trying to use it completely. For two nights and about five incidents, the Boot Command was never used. Ironically, I have not tested the Boot Command on anybody who had a stable normal connection. Azhrei might be correct, it might work fine for anybody who is not experiencing the "disconnect bug" or it might work fine before the "disconnect" bug wipes all the other players out)

The other players can type things in the chat window, move their token, and seemingly run macros. Neither the GM, nor any other player will see that reflected in on the server machine, or any of the clients. The same goes for the GM; I can move, type in the chat window, and run macros.. but no one will see it on the clients.

(That has always been true, but I may not have said that explicitly)

The only way the game can be restored is by for everyone, including the GM/Server to completely restart MapTools.

NOTE: As GM I am able to manually save after this happens, which is a small mercy.

I'm running XP Pro with the latest Java.

Many players are using Vista 64, with a later version of Java at the least. Sorry I can't be more specific at the time of this writing.


INTERESTING ANCEDOTAL NOTE: It's always Derrick. It took me three game nights to conclusively isolate this, because it took us a while to notice the pattern, and then start isolating variables. But Derrick seems to be the one who always gets disconnected first (and the only one returned to the default grassland as if booted from the server), the only one to receive a formal disconnect message. And it always starts with him.

We've had him turn off all spyware, anti-virius software. He has an identical laptop as another player (they bought them together).

I don't know what it means, if anything.

If b62 doesn't get released by Dec 7th, I feel I have no choice but to downgrade to b58. I'm not trying to be petulant, but it seems like I've thoroughly tested b62.. and it's not as stable as I'd like. Not just from a testing perspective, but a practical one. My players are getting weary of restarting. The one player, Derrick, is feeling embarrassed and self-conscious of his computer. And it's eating too much game time to go through this 2 to 3 times a night in a weekly game; we're not getting as much playing done.

If I could be any further help, I'd be glad to do it.

[Natha]

One player gets dropped. Let's call him Derrick. Derrick recieves a message from MapTool that says he has been disconnected. (NOTE: I never before realized that the "Patient Zero" actually does get an error message! Even though no one else will!)

No one else recieves a message that Derrick has been dropped. In fact, no one notices anything wrong until people mentioned that they are typing things in the chat window that no one else is seeing.

(...)

The other players can type things in the chat window, move their token, and seemingly run macros. Neither the GM, nor any other player will see that reflected in on the server machine, or any of the clients. The same goes for the GM; I can move, type in the chat window, and run macros.. but no one will see it on the clients.

(...)

The only way the game can be restored is by for everyone, including the GM/Server to completely restart MapTools.
(...)

That's exactly what happened to us during our first session with b61 (except that my disconnected player isn't called Derrick ... but I guess it's irrelevant )

But I must say the last session was one of our longest (3h30) and did go without problem. Though Derrick was there. (and I had 4 connected players instead of 5).

[DarkWiz58]

I've just ended a campaign early, in which I was DM using Fantasy Grounds II. We've had so many disconnect issues and image never-loading problems, that all of my players and I are making the move to Maptool.

I've been testing with b61 and haven't seen disconnect or image problems, so the Maptool problems others have documented here probably have something to do with heavier loads or mis-matches in Java jar versions.

BUT... if disconnects, image loading, and performance of macros remains a problem in this release, my players will simply abandon my campaigns for good.

If I can help debugging, coding, whatever, tell me what you Dev people need from me.

These problems simply HAVE to be fixed asap. If they are not fixed, about two-dozen people who are planning to use Maptool starting in January won't be.

-Alex / DarkWiz58

[Rumble]

I've just ended a campaign early, in which I was DM using Fantasy Grounds II. We've had so many disconnect issues and image never-loading problems, that all of my players and I are making the move to Maptool.

I've been testing with b61 and haven't seen disconnect or image problems, so the Maptool problems others have documented here probably have something to do with heavier loads or mis-matches in Java jar versions.

BUT... if disconnects, image loading, and performance of macros remains a problem in this release, my players will simply abandon my campaigns for good.

If I can help debugging, coding, whatever, tell me what you Dev people need from me.

These problems simply HAVE to be fixed asap. If they are not fixed, about two-dozen people who are planning to use Maptool starting in January won't be.

-Alex / DarkWiz58

You...could use an older version. The 56-59 run was pretty good.

[Oompa]

I am using the latest maptools version, the latest java version and windows 7.. and i had 2 gaming nights using maptools and none of the nights we had any problems with disconnecting or image loading...

Our nights are 4+ hours..

[plothos]

I've only played one 5 hr session with b61 (me the GM with 3 players).
It happened to me once.

[Full Bleed]

My guess is that these new connection issues are a result of this feature added to B60:

* Reap link dead clients more regularly (client connection list should drop ghost players)

I wonder if inactivity is making clients look "dead" and MT is kicking them (or something along those lines.) Because, right now, this issue seems somewhat sporadic. Unfortunately, there were a lot of other good bug fixes in b60... but it seems like going back to b59 should suffice until b62 comes out (provided b62 is going to roll back this code and not just the new boot code.)

[Paradox]

My guess is that these new connection issues are a result of this feature added to B60:

* Reap link dead clients more regularly (client connection list should drop ghost players)

I wonder if inactivity is making clients look "dead" and MT is kicking them (or something along those lines.) Because, right now, this issue seems somewhat sporadic. Unfortunately, there were a lot of other good bug fixes in b60... but it seems like going back to b59 should suffice until b62 comes out (provided b62 is going to roll back this code and not just the new boot code.)

There's no way for me to be sure, but that is an interesting idea.

It's pure speculation but the player it always happens to is the one that uses the chat window the least. And he never seems to get disconnected during his turn, it's always while waiting for his turn. Though again, that is just guesswork and speculation.

[plothos]

More speculation: if that reap dead clients code assumes the dead client is already disconnected (a ghost), it may not be checking to make sure their computer knows they're getting booted.

This could (or so it seems to me from the armchair) explain a lot.

[Azhrei]

We had a situation on Tuesday in which a player with a bad connection wasn't seeing any MT updates. Booting him didn't work (I had already booted another player once before for a similar problem; maybe only the first Boot works?). After attempting the second and third Boot of this player, the server started acting very weird -- missed mouse clicks and such. I shutdown the server and restarted it and everything was fine -- including the players who had been having problems.

I will try to run an ethereal dump on our next game night (next Tuesday). Well, actually it'll be tcpdump but they use the same binary file format. Perhaps a log of all network traffic will be usable? I'll also try to keep a timestamp of when we have problems -- if we have them at all, Murphy says we won't -- so that the problem can be correlated back to the packet trace.

[kristof65]

I wonder if inactivity is making clients look "dead" and MT is kicking them (or something along those lines.)

My game is played with both MT and Ventrillo, with the bulk of the role-playing on Ventrillo, with MT facilitating maps, private "notes" between players (via whisper) and die rolls. Our last session had no disconnect problems, and there were several times that one or more of the players was "doing nothing" via MT for extended periods of time.

So while it's possible, anecdotal evidence on my part seems to suggest otherwise.

[LaserWolf]

Yeah I didn't want to sound contentious but I don't think any of my players were particularly inactive when we've had this problem - we're usually in the thick of combat with things moving pretty quickly. I've had this disconnection issue originate with two different players, and each was fairly convinced that he was having more general "internet problems" at the time. At least one was simultaneously disconnected with Skype, but I don't think the other was. Not much help, I know.

[plothos]

Played again today for about 4 hours.
One time, again, this happened. No new data or correlations (that we know of) to report. Just another mysterious cessation of real connection between players.

Will probably return to b56 until the prob is addressed.